THIS book, which was published in London in 1955, is a combination
of two earlier books, Science versus Idealism (1946) and In Defence
of Philosophy (1950). Very extensive changes were made in what I had written
before. Besides a very large number of small alterations, many passages were
completely rewritten, a good deal was deleted, and a good deal was added.

If after seven years I could change it again, I would have to add quite a lot
about more recent developments of "logical positivism." I think the
criticisms of its earlier varieties in this book remain quite correct, but the
whole trend of this philosophy has been towards much less open subjectivism,
and the emphasis on the logical study of language has been accentuated.

But the chief change I would make would be in the references to the social
and political standpoint of Bertrand Russell.

At the end of the book (p. 444) it is stated that "many
bourgeois philosophers" are facing a dilemmaeither to tolerate and
serve the forces of war, or else to help the fight for peace. Very greatly to
his credit, there is no doubt as to which side Russell has taken. There is,
of course, a contradiction between his present stand in favour of international
understanding and the renunciation of nuclear weapons, and some of his earlier
statements quoted in these pages. But I do not think this represents any change
in the character of his philosophy, as I have described and criticised it in
this book, or in his hostility to socialism. It represents rather his timely
recognition of factsof what another war would really mean, and therefore
of the necessity of finding some way to prevent it. Having recognised facts,
Russell has never been lacking in either courage or consistency in his personal
actions.

M.C.
London, June, 1962.

[5]

INTRODUCTION

EVERYBODY has some kind of philosophy,
even though they have never learned to discuss it. Everybody is influenced by
philosophical views, even though they have not thought them out for themselves
and cannot formulate them. For philosophy is nothing but our most general account
of the nature of the world and of our place in it—our world outlook.

But the working out of philosophical
views in an exact and systematic way has become a specialised job, undertaken
by the trained members of various schools of philosophy. Nowadays it has even
become a profession, so that we can speak of "professional philosophers."
As a result, much of the discussions of these schools has become largely uninteresting
and incomprehensible to everybody but the " professionals” and their coterie.

What is most of all needed,
however, is that philosophy should cease to be so specialisedthe preserve
of the schools—and become the possession of the masses of the people.

This does not mean that it should
be vulgarised and made easy. Spinoza, one of the greatest philosophers, said
that "all excellent things are as difficult as they are rare." He
was right in thinking that excellent philosophy is difficult, but it does not
follow that it must also be rare.

What it does mean is that philosophy
must serve the masses of the people by helping them to answer their own problems.

This is not the aim of the philosophers
of the schools. They have tended to become more and more specialised, and more
and more remote from the problems and interests of the people. For their part,
they look on this as a virtue and think they are painstakingly unravelling the
truth—an operation so intricate that only the most highly trained can attempt
it. But in reality they are only obscuring and distorting the truth in a maze
of conundrums of their own invention.

These conundrums and all the
subtleties of the scholastics are not, as they themselves imagine, products
of pure abstract thought. If they were, they could be of no possible interest
[end of p. 9] except to other "pure thinkers." But the thinkers
and their thoughts are in fact the products of the social order—in our case,
of the capitalist social order. In this way the most metaphysical of their speculations
have their roots firmly embedded in material reality. The philosophers of the
schools are those who fundamentally accept the social order; they accept its
outlook and its valuations and do not seriously challenge it or seek to change
it. It is this which determines the character of their philosophical views,
their basic theoretical assumptions and approach, their disputes and their problems.

There are a number of schools
arguing with one another. But their whole argument fulfils a definite social
function. In some cases the philosophical schools elaborate ideas which amount
to a more or less direct defence of things as they are. Others know that there
is something wrong, but inculcate a passive acceptance of social evils by teaching
that they flow from the very nature of things and from the necessary imperfections
of mankind. Others express the demand for a change, but sidetrack this into
utopian schemes. All, in these various ways, are a force operating in men's
minds to make them accept the capitalist order and defend it. And however remote
from the common man the philosophical schools may be, their teachings nevertheless
do not fail to influence him.

As capitalism has entered upon
its last phase—monopoly, the phase of imperialism; and as all its contradictions
have become intensified and it has entered upon a state of insoluble general
crisis; so its philosophy has become more involved, more abstract, more specialised.

And at the same time one tendency
above all has come to the top, and that is to retreat from any point of view
which seeks through philosophy to understand the world and our place in it,
but to say that the real world is unknowable, that it is the arena of mysterious
forces which pass our comprehension. Far from trying to find out how we can
advance human knowledge and human action, the philosophers set about explaining
the necessary limitations of human knowledge and human action.

This is nothing but the ideological
expression of the general crisis of capitalism. Capitalism has reached its limits
of development. Within the limits of capitalism men are at [end of p. 10]
the mercy of forces which they can neither understand nor control, and this
is reflected in the specialised teachings of philosophers. The consequences
of the limitations of the capitalist social order are represented by the philosophers
as belonging to the very nature of the world and of the human mind.

All this means that there has
taken place and is taking place a process of the real degeneration of philosophy.
Philosophy has become highly specialised, remote from the people, abstract and
barren, a doctrine not of the advancement of knowledge but of the limitations
of knowledge, not a force for human emancipation but an apology for the existing
social order.

It is against this type of philosophy
that this book is written. Against the philosophies of capitalism it defends
the philosophy of the struggle for socialism—Marxism, dialectical materialism.

Because of the existing state
of "professional" philosophy, many people are asking what is the use
of philosophy anyway, and are deciding they have no use for it. But this merely
means that they themselves uncritically accept all sorts of odds and ends of
philosophical doctrines, including those of the very philosophers they pretend
to despise, which operate in their minds without their thinking about it. For
everyone is influenced by philosophy, and if they take no interest in it, that
merely means that they are influenced by whatever secondhand scraps of it come
their way through the schools, the press, the church, the radio and the cinema.
To have no use for philosophy means uncritically to accept and to use capitalist
philosophy.

Men do need an orientation.
And because of the bankruptcy of contemporary "professional" philosophy
there are some who are now calling for the revival of all sorts of outworn creeds
from the pastsuch as the philosophy of Plato, or such as "Christian"
philosophy, whatever that is conceived to be.

Their desire to escape from
the barrenness of the contemporary schools, and to produce a philosophy which
will give some conscious orientation to the common man, may be praiseworthy.
Nevertheless, by digging for this in the archives of the past they are in effect
passing over the achievements of several centuries of human progress, and, in
particular, [end of p. 11] the achievements of modern science. The net
result is that they produce an orientation which is the very opposite of a scientific
outlook, and leaves men the prey to all sorts of superstitions. It is only another
facet of capitalist philosophy. Conscious of the failure of capitalism's professional
philosophers, these people turn back and seek for inspiration in the philosophy
of the middle ages or of ancient slave society.

The philosophy of the present
and the future must build on the foundations of the past. But it must build
on them. It must advance our understanding of the world and of human society
on the basis of the discoveries of science and of the experience of the struggle
for progress. Only in this way can philosophy meet the needs of the people.
And it is just this which Marxism has achieved. In Marxism, philosophy meets
the needs of the people by helping them so to understand the nature of the world
and of man's place in it as to be able to change the world and to transform
human society—to advance man's dominion over nature and to emancipate mankind
from oppression and superstition.

Marxism, which bases its orientation
on the struggle to end capitalism and to advance to communism, sets itself against
the barren abstractions of the schools of capitalist philosophy and against
those who are seeking to revive dead theories from the past. It unlocks the
door of philosophy for the people, and makes alive for them the heritage of
the past, by continuing the tradition of philosophical thought which seeks to
achieve a rational comprehension of the material world and of history. It is
only by striving to change the world that we can understand it, and by striving
to improve the condition of man that we can understand human nature.

Marxist philosophy thus stands
on the highroad of the development of philosophy, which can only advance as
it serves the cause of human emancipation. It is the successor of all that was
best in the philosophy of the past, in contrast to some of the present day philosophical
schools of capitalism.

In this book I have not attempted
to examine in detail all the schools of contemporary philosophy. In particular,
I have not discussed the more progressive ones. I have concentrated on one alone,
the school of positivism.

Positivism claims to be a scientific
philosophy. But it [end of p. 12] employs its own principles for interpreting
science. And these principles lead to the negative conclusion that we can never
know anything of the law‑governed processes of the objective world.

If we are scientific, say the
positivists, we can formulate ideas which serve to correlate the sense‑data
which we receive when we observe things; or, as the particular variety known
as pragmatists have it, ideas which are found to work, in the sense that
we find it pays us to believe them and act on them. But our ideas do not and
cannot reflect objective material reality, which exists independent of our thinking
of it and experiencing it.

The positivists have elaborated
various theories about the nature of thinking, knowledge, truth, scientific
method and language corresponding to this doctrine. The positivist outlook has
penetrated deeply into modern philosophy of science in particular, and it includes
those philosophical trends and theories known as logical analysis, logical positivism
and pragmatism. These are the theories which are examined in this book.

In trying to get to grips with
them it is important not to take them at their face value. They did not appear
suddenly out of the blue, as their authors sometimes seem to think, as the long‑sought
solution of all the problems of philosophy. They have an historical background
and are only descendants of earlier trends of philosophy. And so I have approached
them historically, to find out where they came from and whither they are leading.

Today positivism has concentrated
within itself all the most negative features of bourgeois philosophy—the doctrine
of the limitations of knowledge and the unknowability of the real world—and
has carried to the furthest pitch the narrow specialisation of philosophy, scholastic
phrasemongering and barren abstraction. Yet the positivist theories pass themselves
off as the very last word of scientific enlightenment.

Just because of their concern
with science, positivist ideas are embraced by many people today who are seeking
a progressive path and coming into the fight against reaction. But these very
ideas play a major part in heading people off from a genuine understanding of
science, and from finding [end of p. 13] the way to use that understanding
to help solve the pressing problems of mankind. Just because of its scientific
appearance, positivism is especially influential in sowing confusion in the
minds of those moving into opposition to capitalism. That is why the polemic
against positivism has been and still is a most important polemic of Marxism
in the field of philosophy.